1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein relates to advertising in computer systems, and to Basic Input/Output System (BIOS).
2. Description of Related Art
Currently the mass market computers have a motherboard which contains a memory chip which stores a small program which initializes the computer after turning the power on. The program is called BIOS, and the memory chip storing permanently this program—BIOS chip.
After powering on the system the BIOS program displays a text or an image on the screen of a computer, and the user can enter a menu and by using the keyboard, change some parameters. Then an operating system is loaded and executed—in a process called booting.
There are a number of companies makers of the BIOS program, providing the BIOS program to a large number of motherboard manufacturers. These manufacturers often want to distinguish themselves from one another and often display a text or a graphics screen with information on themselves with some of the—company logo, web site, product name, model number . . . etc.
In this way the manufacturer of the motherboard is distinguishing and advertising its own products.
The motherboards of computer system have the way of attaching additional hardware—peripheral cards which increase the capabilities of the computer system. Some of these peripheral cards can have its own memory chip where a program—peripheral BIOS can be permanently stored.
The motherboard BIOS through the process of executing, does a search for, and if it finds—calls the peripheral BIOS and executes the stored program.
The peripheral BIOS, when executing, normally displays only the name of the company manufacturer, and model number, in addition to some technical parameters of the peripheral card which can be adjusted through user interaction.
The motherboard BIOS program together with the peripheral BIOS program is running/executing on the computer system normally for a period of as little as 1 s and as much as 30 s or more, before loading and executing an operating system stored on the computer system.
The execution can be stopped, and then allowed to continue, by pushing a particular key on a keyboard or a combination of keys.
The time between:
from power on to booting an operating system,
or from shut down and reboot of already loaded operating system, to booting again of an operating system,
is currently not utilized for providing information other than the manufacturer's or for adjusting technical parameters on the motherboard or the peripheral.
This time can be used to display simple advertising messages in text or graphics on the computer screen, or in sound on the sound system of the computer equipped with it.